"The Pointless Banishment of Sex Offenders."

A NYT editorial. Excerpt:

Far from protecting children and communities, the California court found, blanket restrictions in fact create a greater safety risk by driving more sex offenders into homelessness, which makes them both harder to monitor and less likely to get essential rehabilitative services like medical treatment, psychotherapy and job assistance.

Residency laws often lead people to live apart from their families, obliterating what is for many the most stabilizing part of their lives....

[N]ot all people who have been convicted of sex offenses pose a risk to children, if they pose any risk at all. Blanket residency-restriction laws disregard that reality — and the merits of an individualized approach to risk assessment — in favor of a comforting mirage of safety.

And let me recommend this episode of the Freakonomics podcast, "Making Sex Offenders Pay — and Pay and Pay and Pay." Transcript here. Excerpt:

LEVITT: I think that the registry is really, if you are a sex offender, the registry is just a brutal way of making sure you can never hide. For most other crimes, you’re essentially anonymous. There’s no really easy way for people to know that you’ve done the crimes. And true, when you apply for a job, you’re supposed to say you’re a convicted felon, but nobody really does anyway, and the worst that could happen to you if you don’t say it, is that they just fire you after awhile when they find it out. But the registry is really a different kind of beast because the registry means that no matter where you go or what you’re doing, there are easy, virtually costless ways for people to find out who you are. And it’s hard to say, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I mean, from a deterrence perspective, you think it’s got to be a good thing. That if you know ahead of time that your entire life you’re going to be labeled as a sex offender, it’s got to have some effect in terms of trying to, you know, it’s gotta have some effect in terms of keeping you from doing the crime. But-

DUBNER: Well you said, “if it’s a good deterrent, then it might be worth it, as costly as it may be to the individuals.” What do you know about how much of a deterrent it is? The registry?...

Does the 6-year-old boy want to be seen reading "Freakonomics" (the book) on Freakonomics (the blog)?

It is a cute picture, especially if you love kids reading, but:

My husband is K.C. and the kids are Jacob (10) and Jared (6). We live in Connecticut, and K.C. commutes into New York City to work as a portfolio manager. I am a stay-at-home mom with a medical degree.

A few months ago, I thought Jacob would like reading Freakonomics, which he thoroughly enjoyed. After he finished that, I thought he might also like Malcolm Gladwell, so he is now in the midst of Blink.

Our copy of Freakonomics was lying around the house, so Jared started to get interested as well...

I have to share a funny story with you. When I told/asked Jacob about being included in your blog, at first he seemed pleased, but then a slight cloud passed over his face, and he said, “Well, I don’t want to be recognized …” Whereupon my husband reassured him that he would not be followed by paparazzi.

First commenter, one "sunshine" says:

Weird, a child asked not to have his photo put up on a highly-read Web page and both the parent and the editor refused to honor his request. Nonconsensual blogging. This concern may seem like a trivial joke, but look for this issue to increase in coming years.

Is sunshine's criticism apt? Or can we see from the context that the child imagined that once his photograph appeared on a popular blog, strangers would accost him in the street?

And more generally, I do wonder about putting pictures of children up on line. People love to see pictures of kids. It's a nice, happy part of life to see children. Yet some people seem to think that children should not be seen -- that it's dangerous for their children to be visible at all.

On the subject of children reading: I can see why "Freakonomics" and "Blink" make excellent reading for the young. We're so intent on foisting fiction on children, but there is a lot of nonfiction out their to stir their thinking.

"As an economist, I am supposed to have something intelligent to say about the current financial crisis."

"To be honest, however, I haven’t got the foggiest idea what this all means."

Whew. And I was feeling bad about not having anything worthwhile to say.

That quote is from Steven D. Levitt. But Levitt gets Douglas W. Diamond and Anil K. Kashyap to explain many things, which they do very clearly, answering a series of questions:

1) What has happened that is so remarkable?

2) Why did these things happen?

3) Why did the Treasury and Fed let Lehman fail but rescue Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and A.I.G.?

4) I do not work at Lehman or A.I.G. and do not own much stock; why should I care?

5) What does it mean for the Fed and Treasury going ahead?

6) What does this mean for the markets going ahead?

7) When will the turmoil end?